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ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access published online on October 23, 2008
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil, doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsn171
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© 2008 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Published by Oxford Journals. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Exploring the effect of Marine Protected Areas on the dynamics of fish communities in the southern Benguela: an individual-based modelling approach

Dawit Yemane1, Yunne-Jai Shin2 and John G. Field3

1 Marine Biology Research Centre, Department of Zoology, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa
2 IRD, CRH, Avenue Jean Monnet, BP 171, 34203 Sete Cedex, France
3 Marine Research (MA-RE) Institute, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa

Correspondence to D. Yemane: Present address: Marine and Coastal Management, Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Private Bag X2, Rogge Bay 8012, Cape Town, South Africa. tel: +27 21 4023319; fax: +27 21 4023639; e-mail: dawityemane{at}gmail.com and dyemane{at}deat.gov.za

Yemane, D., Shin, Y-J., and Field, J. G. 2009. Exploring the effect of Marine Protected Areas on the dynamics of fish communities in the southern Benguela: an individual-based modelling approach. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been suggested as a tool that can achieve some of the goals of an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF), e.g. prevention of overexploitation, biodiversity conservation, recovery of overexploited population, but the consequences of their establishment on the dynamics of protected components are often unclear. Spatial and multispecies models can be used to investigate the effects of their introduction. An individual-based, spatially explicit, size-structured, multispecies model (known as OSMOSE) is used to investigate the likely consequences of the introduction of three MPAs off the coast of South Africa, individually or in combination. The simultaneous introduction of the MPAs affected varying proportions of the distribution of the modelled species (5–17%) and 12% of the distribution of the whole community. In general, the introduction of the MPAs in the different scenarios resulted in a relative increase in the biomass of large predatory fish and a decrease in the biomass of small pelagic fish. The simulation demonstrates that consideration of trophic interactions is necessary when introducing MPAs, with indirect effects that may be detrimental to some (mainly smaller prey) species.

Keywords: ecosystem models, individual-based models, Marine Protected Areas, southern Benguela

Received 1 September 2007; accepted 17 September 2008.


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